All Moved In – Moving Expenses and Looking Forward

Whew! All the boxes are unpacked (Well, 95%) and the cable guy came by today. I have been pretty unhappy with my telephone provider for the last year, with them double-billing me for 4 months and then disconnecting me last week on Thursday instead of the requested Saturday. On top of that I still don’t have a dial tone. I had set up an appointment for Cable TV previously for today since I had to be home when they came. He showed up on time (plus), installed my cable tv promptly (plus), and afterwards I asked him about Cable High-speed internet. It was priced about the same as my DSL, and he said he could hook me up right then and there. Sold!
I have been unhappy with Comcast before due to their annual rate gouging, but hey, it’s works and I already have a regular TiVo.I even got a discount since I was now technically an “existing customer”.

Looking forward, our rent increased $50/month, and we no longer get cable for free, so that’s another $50/month, for a overall increase of $100/month. All other expenses should stay the same, although I am hoping to save on the heating bill since we now have a separate thermostat and heater in each room. I also plan on installing flourescent light bulbs. Our new landlord is pretty chill so hopefully that will result in less stress, which is priceless (I had to work in that MasterCard thing somehow).

Comments

I am also a 26 year old recently married white collar worker and I can really appreciate your efforts. One suggestion, why don’t you sign up for Voice Over IP for your telephone service instead of traditional? I have been a Vonage user for 2 years, and can highly recommend it. While there may be some minor quirks and glitches along the way, I love the literally $50 a month savings! I don’t know how expensive your current phone bills are, but if they are anything like mine were, you could probably pay off your rent increase by switching. Feel free to email me with any questions. Good Luck!

I am also a 26 year old recently married white collar worker and I can really appreciate your efforts. One suggestion, why don’t you sign up for Voice Over IP for your telephone service instead of traditional? I have been a Vonage user for 2 years, and can highly recommend it. While there may be some minor quirks and glitches along the way, I love the literally $50 a month savings! I don’t know how expensive your current phone bills are, but if they are anything like mine were, you could probably pay off your rent increase by switching. Feel free to email me with any questions. Good Luck!

Thanks for the comments! I have actually been thinking about going with a VoIP phone provider (especially in the last week). There are also some good deals from BroadVoice and SunRocket out there now. I simply haven’t had a chance to compare the options. I also need a reliable fax line for work reasons, and last time I checked Vonage charges another $9.99/month for that, which makes the prices for comparable. I use my cell phone for most of my lost distances needs, which aren’t enormous. But this is something I will definitely do more research on in the future!

I’ve run the numbers again and again, and I just can’t justify paying for the fluorescent lightbulbs. Sure, they save you something like $30/bulb over the lifetime of the bulb, but the lifetime of the bulb can be up to 100 or more years depending on how often you have that particular bulb on. Since a regular 60-watt bulb only costs about $0.006 per hour to operate (a fraction of a cent even at today’s high energy costs/kWh), this expense in reality does not add up that quickly. The extra money you pay for the bulb invested instead over the lifetime of the bulb is going to add up to more than your savings (so, the future value of that present money far outweighs the value of the future savings). I think a much better investment would be small kitchen appliances to help you save on air conditioning costs by not heating up the kitchen by using the oven (or just a good microwave cookbook serves most of my purposes).

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